Iraqi museum displays gold treasures

Sun June 08, 2003 08:29 AM ET
By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad’s famed antiquities museum, ransacked by looters as Saddam Hussein’s rule crumbled, will reopen next month after many of the treasures feared lost forever were found stashed in secret vaults around the city.
Museum research director Donny George said Sunday that among the items on show would be the Treasure of Nimrud, a priceless set of gem-studded gold Assyrian jewelry that has been displayed only once, briefly, in the last 3,000 years. The treasure was recovered Thursday from flooded vaults below the gutted shell of the looted central bank. Discovered between 1988 and 1990 in ancient royal tombs below an Assyrian palace dating from the ninth century BC, it was exhibited in the Baghdad Museum before being hidden in the central bank ahead of the 1991 Gulf War.
The treasure will be on show from July 3, when the museum’s large Assyrian gallery will also reopen. Besides the Nimrud artifacts, U.S. investigators also recovered thousands of items from the museum’s main exhibition collection last week when employees led them to a secret vault somewhere in Baghdad. The items had been taken there for safekeeping ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “It’s a secret place where we still have the whole collection of the museum that was displayed and it’s safe,” said George, standing among debris in the wrecked museum. Asked by Reuters where the secret vault was, he said: “If I tell you, it will not be a secret.”GREAT LOSS FOR HUMANITYGeorge said museum staff had also returned items they took home during the war. U.S. investigators say around 3,000 museum pieces are still missing, most of which were not of exhibition quality. The number is far lower than initially feared. The failure of U.S. forces to prevent Baghdad Museum being plundered sparked a storm of protest around the world in April. The U.S. military said its men were initially too busy fighting in the streets around the museum to halt the looting. George said 33 items from the main collection were missing, probably stolen by professional thieves. Among the lost treasures are the Vase of Warka, a Sumerian votive bowl dating from 3200 BC, and the bronze statue of Basitki from 2300 BC.
“I’m not so optimistic about them because I believe they were taken by professionals,” George said. “I believe they are out of the country now.” He said the loss of these artifacts was a tragedy. “The Iraq museum was maybe the only museum in the world that had a complete chain of human history starting half a million years ago to the beginning of last century. These items were very important links in that chain,” he said. “You could trace the development of art, you could trace the development of philosophy in these things. Now they are missing and that is a great loss not only for the museum, but for the whole of humanity.”

Source originally https://www.reuters.com/